About Mr. Robin Coupland

Doctor of Political Science (Public International Law), is since 2000 the Director for International Law and Cooperation within the Movement of the International Committee of the Red Cross.
Robin M. Coupland is the adviser on armed violence and the effects of weapons for the International Committee of the Red Cross. He joined the ICRC in 1987 and worked as a field surgeon in Thailand, Cambodia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, Angola, Somalia, Kenya and Sudan. He has developed a health-oriented approach to a variety of issues relating to the design and use of weapons. A graduate of the Cambridge University School of Clinical Medicine, UK, he trained as a surgeon at the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital and University College Hospital, London. He became a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1985. He has recently taken a year's sabbatical leave from the ICRC to study for a Graduate Diploma in International Law at the University of Melbourne in Australia. As part of his current position he has focused on the effects of conventional and anti-personnel weapons. He has paid particular attention to the effects of anti-personnel mines and, by using the Red Cross wound classification, fragment injuries and the disruption of bullets. He has developed and published an analytical framework of armed violence as a tool for reporting and communication.